Who stole the National Health Service?

Now I am all for revisiting historical events, people and movements, and explore how modern scholarship and forgotten research can offer up new perspectives.

Aneurin Bevan, 1952 

Equally it is a given, that history can be used to present a “distorted” story which advances the interests of a section of the population, the dogma of a political party, along with the ambitions of populist national leaders.

But I have to say I was flabbergasted to day when I came across a timeline for the NHS, which suggested that the Labour politician Aneurin Bevan who is credited with the establishment of the NHS is relegated to a bit player, in advance of Winston Churchill and William Beveridge, who presented a plan during the war to eliminate the “five giants” which would hamper the post war reconstruction of Britain.  

These included "Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness".  Beveridge’s proposals to eliminate the five would form the basis for the Welfare State.

So, yes Beveridge along with  Bevan should naturally be on the time line, but appearing three times was Winston Churchill, who according to the script was “The Tory PM who commissioned the Beveridge Report. proposed The NHS in his election manifesto and pumped more money in than ever Bevan did”.

Labour Party Poster, 1948

And so there you have it, the author of the timeline has stolen the NHS for the Tories.

Now it was actually Arthur Greenwood a Labour MP and Minister in the Coalition Government who announced the creation of an inter departmental committee which would carry out  “a survey of the existing national schemes of social insurance and allied services, including workmen’s compensation and make recommendations” *

Added to which the idea that there should be a national health system along with a change in the provision of social care had long been advocated by the Labour Movement and had already existed in Wales in the form of the Tredegar Workmen's Medical Aid and Sick Relief Fund, which had been established in 1890, in Tredegar in South Wales.**

And which in return for contributions from its members provided health care free at the point of use.

Interestingly our timeline didn’t mention that the Conservative Party under the leadership of Winston Churchill voted 21 times against the formation of the NHS, including the second and third readings of the bill.

Nor does our timeline recognize that the NHS was established just three years after the war, when there were huge demands for limited resources, which had to be set against the backdrop of food shortages, and a terrible winter.

NHS spending, 1948-54

And by the time Churchill and the Tories came back to power in 1951, the worst of the immediate post war recovery problems were over, and the economy was set fair.

Nor does the timeline acknowledge the awful state of health  amongst the majority of working people.

In its first full year there had been a huge demand in the number of free prescriptions issued for medicine and spectacles and in the rise in the cost of the NHS from £327.8 million in 1948-49 to £430.3 million by 1953-54.***

And that I suspect indicated just how much of a need there was from people who had not been able to afford even basic health care under pre war Tory Governments.

NHS spending as a % of GNP

But when the figures were adjusted for inflation and judged as a % of GNP spending actually fell from 3.51% in 1948-49 to 3.24% in 1953-54.

So I rather think our timeline is an attempt to rehabilitate a present Tory Government who has not distinguished itself during the pandemic, and lurches from one crisis to another.

By all means revisit and challenge historical shibboleths, but at least do it honestly.

Picture; Aneurin Bevan and his wife Jenny Lee in Corwen, 1952, Geoff Charles, made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication , Labour Party Poster, 1948

*Summary of the Beveridge Report, presented to the War Cabinet, November 1942, http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/small/cab-66-31-wp-42-547-27.pdf

**Out of Tredegar ...... Aneurin Bevan, 70 years of the NHS and the Welsh health service which preceded it, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/05/out-of-tredegar-aneurin-bevan-70-years.html

***Source Report of the Guillebaud Committee Parliament. Report of the committee of enquiry into the cost of the national health service. (Chairman: CW Guillebaud.) Cmd 9663. London: HMSO,  1956, quoted from National Health Service History, Geoffrey Rivett, http://www.nhshistory.net/Chapter%201.htm#Reviewing_the_NHS